Magill, Joe

K-25 Oral History Interview
Date: 4/15/05
Interviewee: Joe Magill
Interviewer: Bart Callan
[1:00:08]
Callan, B.: Let’s start out with some hard hitting questions first. Go ahead and say your name and spell your name out for me so that way we have that on the camera.
Magill, J.: Joe. E. Magill. That’s M-A-G-I-L-L. No capital in the G.
Callan, B.: Okay. And, let’s talk about your background. Where were you born?
Magill, J.: Born in Bear Creek Valley just below where 95 crosses Bear Creek.
Callan, B.: And you grew up down there?
Magill, J.: Yes.
Callan, B.: Okay.
Magill, J.: Until I was 13 years old.
Callan, B.: Okay. And what -- describe the place for me, the way it was back then.
[1:01:48]
Magill, J.: It was rural, very rural. There was no electricity. Out in the rural community there was a wheat area had electrification. And the school -- the school had electrification before we got it from Tennessee Power by a ductal system we had running.
[Crew Talk]
An interesting note is that in high school, which is up at Clinton, we had a boy who the only thing he wanted to do was draw airplanes and fly those airplanes. The teacher saw these going, he’ll never do anything. He designed Gemini Rocket.
Callan, B.: Really?
Magill, J.: -- he is back to the classroom a couple years ago and he said many people didn’t realize that they had -- Neil Armstrong had twelve seconds to get off the moon.
Callan, B.: I’m sorry?
Magill, J.: Had twelve seconds left to get off the moon.
Callan, B.: Really?
[1:04:30]
Magill, J.: Right. If he hadn’t got off in twelve seconds, he’d a missed the ride home. [laughter].
Callan, B.: I want you to talk about that so I’ll ask you about that at the end.
[Crew Talk]
Callan, B.: Tell me just what you had for breakfast today. We’re just doing -- we’re trying to the audio straight so we make sure we get you interview down.
Magill, J.: Okay. I had a bowl of cereal, a banana, and strawberries, a cup of coffee.
[Crew Talk]
Callan, B.: Okay. And again, we’re going to have to back up again and tell me about what this place looked like back when you were growing up.
Magill, J.: It was a -- this farming area, the farms were hill country, most of them. Of course they had some real river bottom farms along the Clinch and it was the area that hunters liked to come in and hunt because we -- they had only a hundred sixteen acres and they released two coveys of quail on the property here and it was completely ruled, I’d say outside of Wheat area, there was no electrification.
[1:07:04]
We had Baker’s Mill was the waterwheel turning the mill. That was at where East Fork empties into Poplar Creek. That was where you got your corn ground, also your wheat ground and flour. They had bran and what they call second and the fine flour. The seconds what they used to make gingerbread and whole wheat actually meal is what it was.
Callan, B.: What did -- who did you live out here with? You lived out here with your parents, I guess? Your folks? Mom and dad?
Magill, J.: I’m sorry?
Callan, B.: You lived out here with your parents?
Magill, J.: Yes.
Callan, B.: Okay. Who all lived out on your property?
[1:07:52]
Magill, J.: It was -- the property was where 95 crosses Bear Creek Valley. South of that.
Callan, B.: Okay. And who lived out there with you?
Magill, J.: Okay. Dad and mother, Charles Robert Magill and Anne Freels Magill and two sisters. Two twin sisters and one sister. In other words, there were five of us all together. Two years difference in all the births, except the twins.
Callan, B.: Okay. And how big was your property.
Magill, J.: A hundred and sixteen acres. It was known as Magill Valley because you had dad’s farm, uncle Ben’s farm, Frank’s farm, and Bill’s farm. All the Magills in a sequence down Bear Creek Valley.
Callan, B.: And, so, was that all part of the same hundred acres or were these --
Magill, J.: No. They were more than a hundred acres.
Callan, B.: All together.
[1:09:13]
Magill, J.: All together there was about 800 acres. Excuse me.
Callan, B.: And, what was your lifestyle like out here? What did your parents do?
Magill, J.: We, we truck patched. In other words, they raised vegetables and we’d take those to market and sell them. We made sorghum molasses, where you grind the cane and that was our main I guess you could call it cash crop. We didn’t grow tobacco. Dad didn’t. We grew two crops in one. The first and last. He said there’s got to be a better way to make a living than to fool with tobacco. We had our own wheat, in other words we were pretty self-sufficient. Of course, we had chickens, eggs, milk. We’d kill hogs, several hogs and we processed the meat and sold it for sausage. We killed nineteen hogs one winter and ground up everything but the hams and the lard, of course. And mother was mixing it and put it in the butter pan mold and it weighed exactly a pound and so that’s the way we made our living. But the only thing we had to buy, of course we had to buy vinegar, salt, soda, kerosene for the oil lamps, and flavor, things like that.
[1:11:32]
Callan, B.: And, where did you go to buy that stuff? Was there a little town?
Magill, J.: We had a little country store close by and we’d go to Harriman or Kingston or Lenoir City. Very seldom ever come to Clinton. Of course, we had to cross the ferry going to Lenoir City or White Wing and then the Gallahar Ferry going to Kingston. We were about sixteen miles from either, sixteen miles either Kingston or Lenoir City. They had also did some logging when he was growing up he -- where Melton Hill Dam is now they would raft logs. They would tie them together and ride them down to Chattanooga when the spring rains came.
Callan, B.: And that was on what river?
Magill, J.: Clinch. Right
[1:12:53]
Callan, B.: The area of the Clinch River, over by the Clinch River where they chose to build the K-25 building, had you been -- had you ever been to that country before or that area?
Magill, J.: Oh yes.
Callan, B.: What was it like before they came in?
Magill, J.: It was a -- they had the routers and the -- they had the tractors and they did quite a bit more farming, raised cattle, and this type of thing than we did because our farm was small and it was hill country.
Callan, B.: Do you know whose farm it was?
Magill, J.: Oh --
Callan, B.: That the building is on. Whose property was that?
Magill, J.: It was dads. My father homesteaded in Montana, cleared up a homestead and he dried out. Had three bumper crops and in the fourth year he didn’t even make the seed back. So he mortgaged the homestead and came back to Tennessee and bought his brother’s and sister’s interest in the home place and was living there. He and mother got married after they got back from out west.
[1:14:21]
Callan, B.: So, the actual place where K-25 was built, that was a part of Magill Valley? Is that it?
Magill, J.: No. You had Magill Valley was east of the bend in the river where the Gallaher’s and Browder’s owned. We’d go there to -- they had a stud horse and we’d take the mare over to breed her and sometimes a bull -- they’d take cows to the bull because everybody didn’t have a bull and --
Callan, B.: So, who was it actually that had that land?
Magill, J.: Ray Gallaher and WT and Ray Brower.
Callan, B.: I’m sorry. What was the last one?
Magill, J.: Ray Brower.
Callan, B.: Can you spell that for me?
Magill, J.: B-R-O-W-E-R.
Callan, B.: Thank you. So, prior to that it was basically like a pasture, I guess.
[1:15:34]
Magill, J.: Well, it was -- they had the -- like I said, they raised cattle, more cattle than we did. We just had our own milk -- had a milk cow. Two milk cows. And they raised cattle to sell and trade. And they, of course, had a big wheat crop and we sold our wheat, that which we didn’t use, to JL and Smith’s in Knoxville.
Callan, B.: And you were pretty young back then, but --
Magill, J.: Right.
Callan, B.: -- can, do you recall what were your first encounters, I guess -- did you remember when you first saw government people and surveyors and people coming out here and one of the first times the government had contact with your folks? What happened?
Magill, J.: On October, 1942, WT Cooper and I were stripping Sorghum cane and they came through the fields and cut a swath through the cane patch and, doing a survey. And we asked them what they were doing it for and they said, I think it was “a dollar and a half an hour. And then from then on -- we didn’t have to move until March the fifteenth, ‘43.
[1:17:16]
Now, most people around where Y-12 and K-25 and X-10, that’s where the work started immediately. They had to move out almost immediately. Uncle Jim Anderson owned a bigger part of X-10 and his notice was filed on November the 20th, ‘42 and the date of taking was December the 12th.
Callan, B.: What are these surveyor guys -- so, basically when you asked them what they were doing it for and there answer was about a dollar ten an hour, jut sort of like a wise remark, I guess.
Magill, J.: Yeah.
Callan, B.: They just weren’t telling you. Did anybody ever give you any sort of idea of that or tell your parents what was going on?
Magill, J.: Nothing.
Callan, B.: What, do you remember the day that they came and said that you had to leave? How much time did they give you?
[1:18:34]
Magill, J.: I don’t recall the exact time because, like I say, we were out in the rural, more rural area. There wasn’t anything going on. Where they cut the swaths through the cane patch, there’s a gas line there now. That’s the only thing they’d done to our farm down there was improve the road and put a high transmission line through, and the gas line. The rest of it’s like it was -- well, they’ve planted pines and the beetles eat the pines, but --
Callan, B.: What about -- what about the people in this community. What were they talking about when this was going on? What did you guys think of these outsiders?
Magill, J.: Well, they didn’t think much of them. They -- a lot of conversation going on and, of course, they’d always get back to, well, this is for the war effort. Everybody had a loved one in the army and some of the boys in the community had lost their lives and --
Callan, B.: I’m taking notes here for --
Magill, J.: Yeah.
[1:20:06]
Callan, B.: What was I going to ask you? What did these guys look like?
Magill, J.: They looked just ordinary like you and I. The, of course, they had a little surveyor stake and I found out those surveyor stakes made real good kindling. [laughter]
Callan, B.: Oh wow. This is the kind of stuff I want to hear. So, tell me about the move when you guys had to pack up and go.
Magill, J.: Well --
Callan, B.: What was it like?
Magill, J.: Well, you take 56,000 acres out of the tax stream, what does that do to the property outside of the main area taken? The measure of damage is, of course, is the time of taking. Well, the time of taking, there wasn’t much comparison. There hadn’t been much free wheeling, in other words, a willing buyer and a willing seller of how the market process is established. There hadn’t been much of that because we were still in the depths of the depression and so what happened -- here you take 56,000 acres out of the tax stream, it triples, more than triples the property outside that. So, we had 116 acres, a six room house, hardwood floors, and oak floors down the stairs, maple upstairs, and it had a large barn, all the out buildings and they paid us 3,200 dollars for it; which was not enough to replace it. So, we had to share crop. We shared cropped until I got through college.
[1:22:26]
Callan, B.: After, so, let me make sure that I understand. And I think that I do. You’re saying that when this acreage was bought and displaced all these people, the land that was available surrounding this acreage, of course, the sort of basic law of supply and demand, the property values just shot through the roof because this happened. So, I mean, by comparison, if you or your folks went to purchase an equivalent farm, what would it cost you? You were given 3,200 dollars. What would it have cost you to get the equivalent piece?
Magill, J.: Probably twelve to fifteen thousand at that time.
[1:23:13]
Callan, B.: So, property values really went up about five fold? Five times?
Magill, J.: Right. I offered to buy the farm that dad owned back from the Department of Energy and I offered them what they paid for it based upon the present rate of forty-two dollars and it came to around 39,000, but they weren’t interested.
Callan, B.: So, how did your family feel when they were, you know, when they had to start doing sharecropping? How did your life change as a result of this? Your lifestyle?
Magill, J.: Well, it also changed the time that we had much larger farm to take care of. Kenneth, my brother, four years older than I was, had to go to the service so that left my dad and I and we had to -- we planted five hundred pound seed potatoes every spring. We planted probably an acre of watermelons and tomatoes and sweet potatoes and that -- we got fifty percent of the, of the truck patches and then the large crops, like corn and wheat and oats, we got two fifths.
Callan, B.: Pretty much everyone in the community more or less, would you say they kind of went through the exact same story that --
[1:25:15]
Magill, J.: Yes.
Callan, B.: -- that happened to you?
Magill, J.: Right. Of course, they were going by the rules of law and what they should have taken this as a unique situation, not just the average, willing buyer, willing seller. They should have taken the fact that this much came out of the tax stream and it caused the other property to be or exceed the value that would have been if there hadn’t been anything taken.
Callan, B.: Tell me about, and you mentioned this before the interview, but tell me about the school.
Magill, J.: We had a one through twelve Wheat High, Wheat Consolidated High School, one through twelve. And we had very good teachers. One teacher per room, each grade had one teacher. And, they motivated us. We found out it was a lot easier to go to school than it was to stay at home and work for our parents. There was about twenty something in my class and we had a girl who went on and got a doctorate in English. I think there’s about five got their master’s in education plus twenty five -- forty five, and two attorneys.
[1:27:11]
Callan, B.: And you’re one of them. Right?
Magill, J.: Yeah.
Callan, B.: Okay. The Wheat School, let’s go ahead and just change tapes real quick. We’re going to -- the tapes only run 30 minutes, so we got to flip tapes every --
[End Of Tape 1 - Begin Tape 2]
[2:00:07]
Callan, B.: Okay. We are back on. So, we were talking about the Wheat School. After all these folks from all these other places they came from came to do the work at the K-25, were you going to the same school that their kids were going to? Did you have --
Magill, J.: No, I -- the Wheat School closed on December the 20th, ‘42 and then some of the students were already moved out. Some of them went to Dyllis some went to in Oliver Springs to finish out that year. My sisters had -- they went to Oliver Springs and graduated in June.
[1:01:38]
Callan, B.: Okay. And, gosh we were talking about what happened when they closed down the Wheat School and some people went to -- some went to Oliver Springs and to, was it Dyllis?
Magill, J.: Yes. I went to Dyllis until March of that year and I finished the seventh grade at the Sulfur Spring, that’s out in Clinton and Dutch Valley. You had to understand, we left a school that had running water, electricity, a big cafeteria, and -- see, Wheat owned one hundred fifty acres of farm and the farm boys planted the crops, the cafeteria workers harvested them, canned them to be used in the cafeteria and moved out of Anderson County, had to go to a three-room school, no electricity and no indoor plumbing, no cafeteria and no gymnasium to play ball. It’s quite a come down.
Callan, B.: So, after you finished out the one year, then was there another schoolhouse built or --
[1:03:18]
Magill, J.: No. Wheat School was used for a short while for office at K-25. Then they tore down the school for some reason. I don’t know why because it was a great building, very good brick.
Callan, B.: What’s there now?
Magill, J.: Nothing.
Callan, B.: Okay. And, so after you finished out the one year of school, then where did everybody go to school. You know, if you were like in third grade, where did you go to finish your schooling?
Magill, J.: Well, like I say, I finished the seventh grade and then we moved, the whole family moved so that meant we could go to the school in Anderson County where we lived and so I went to school there, Clinton -- to eighth grade at Dutch Valley and Clinton through the rest of the high school. Five years, never missed a day.
[1:04:33]
Callan, B.: Did the children living, the implants, the children of the implants that were living in Oak Ridge, did they go to the same schools or did they have separate schools?
Magill, J.: No, they had separate schools. They had the Oak Ridge School. We very seldom would associate with them other than for a football game or basketball game.
Callan, B.: Was there a lot of rivalry and resentment at the football games?
Magill, J.: Oh yes.
Callan, B.: Tell me about that.
Magill, J.: There was, well, you know, now Oak Ridge wins most of the games, they have a better crowd to draw from than we did. But, when I was in high school they never beat us. Of course, I didn’t get to play sports because I had fifty head of cattle to feed and three hundred laying hens to feed and gather the eggs and so I was pretty busy.
[1:05:52]
Callan, B.: Did the, I guess the value of the stuff you farmed, was any of the stuff that was being farmed, was it being sold to Oak Ridge?
Magill, J.: Through the restaurants. Mr. Hopkins owned a restaurant down here and we supplied much of the potatoes, corn, beans to those restaurants. And you could sell anything with a meat to it and one of my projects in the future farmers was raising chickens and I could raise a chicken in six weeks and it would weigh a pound and a half. And I sold those a dollar apiece on foot. And people would take them, dress them themselves. We didn’t dress any chickens.
Callan, B.: A dollar apiece at the time, was that a pretty good price for a chicken?
Magill, J.: Yes. Uh-huh.
Callan, B.: Were there other ways that, I guess, that K-25 and Oak Ridge came to be that you would say either yourself or people that you knew benefited or -- were positive things happening to this community and positive things happening --
[1:07:29]
Magill, J.: Well, it benefited the whole community, as such, because before this you had -- the industry was coal mining and Magnet Mill and that was it. Then, so, Oak Ridge is built on -- or Anderson County is built on energy. First you had lumber business; second, the coal; third, water from Norris Dam and then nuclear energy. So, its base is energy.
Callan, B.: Did a lot of people that were in this community -- did they end up getting jobs, any of them?
Magill, J.: Oh yes. Several of them, yes. My theory was why there were three large tracts of land to build these three separate plants on, you separated -- there is separation, (Indiscernible) Chestnut Ridge and then Black Oak Ridge. They didn’t know what they were doing, so they just waited for one plant to blow up and this would fix it, what they had invested in the other one. That’s my theory.
Callan, B.: They -- what they -- boy, I could tell you I know from the interviews and basically there was three different processes and they weren’t sure which process was going to work and since they had to get this accomplished in such a short period of time to make this material, they built factories or plants to try out or to see basically -- went full scale production to see if they could make one of the three processes and what process would work best. But that’s why they have the three different buildings. One process was a thermal process. There was another one that was based on gaseous diffusion and one that was based on magnetism. And the one that they ended up going with was the one that was based on gaseous diffusion that they found most agreeable. But, yeah, they were trying to see which one was actually going to work properly and that’s what I’ve been able to discern from the previous interviews I’m doing. I just wanted to see if maybe you were interested.
[1:10:07]
Magill, J.: To answer your question there, did the area benefit. Yes the area benefited from -- so few; many of the people had to take the rough end of the stick, so to speak. They shared un-proportionate share of their life.
Callan, B.: What was the next question I was going to ask. I had a good one. In reflection now, how do you feel about what happened? How do you feel about K-25 being built here?
Magill, J.: I think I’d say it benefited the whole area. There was people like my father and mother -- my mother never really got over the move. But they had -- he really bounced like a rubber ball. It didn’t’ matter. He can adjust anywhere. He could adjust to all sort of degree, winter in Montana, you can -- so, I don’t know. It profited the community, as such.
Callan, B.: When they were -- and I’m sure there was a lot of buzz around the community about, you know, all this activity going on over here and I’m sure that you had contact, you know, ran into these people from time to time. When -- do you have any funny or interesting stories about when, you know, you asked these people what it was they were doing out there? What did they tell you?
Magill, J.: Well, they didn’t tell us anything about what they were doing. I worked out there a little while for engineering in payroll, just for a few months and they told me when I went in, they says, you don’t know how many people are working here. You don’t know when the trucks come in or go out. You don’t know what they’re hauling. You just don’t know. So, I think -- most people treated it that way.
[1:12:48]
Callan, B.: At the time, did you have any theories or did your family have any theories about what it was they were doing out here?
Magill, J.: No. They thought it was a factory for explosives. That’s all that -- they had no idea of the atomic bomb. It wasn’t mentioned until after the bomb was dropped. No one outside the Oak Ridge knew of Oak Ridge. It was the Manhattan Project or the (indiscernible).
Callan, B.: When -- do you remember that particular day? It was August 6, 1945, I believe, was the day the atomic bomb was dropped. Do you remember what you were doing on that day?
Magill, J.: No, I don’t.
Callan, B.: When you found out, I guess it was probably shortly thereafter, it probably came out in the newspapers --
[1:13:53]
Magill, J.: Yes.
Callan, B.: -- that Oak Ridge was related to all this. How did you and other people in the community react to that? What did you think about that?
Magill, J.: Well, they took great pride in the fact that they had a part in it. I told you at the beginning here, my brother was in Patton’s third army and he was the first group that came back from over in Europe to train to invade the mainland. He was in training at Fort Campbell Kentucky at the time that the bomb was dropped and, of course, everybody there went wild and they said, Mack, where’s Oak Ridge? And he said, I never heard of it. We’d never heard of it referred to as Oak Ridge; just the Manhattan Project or the Project, really; just the Project. Where do you work? At the Project and they wouldn’t tell you.
[1:15:16]
Callan, B.: Did you guys get along pretty good with these folks?
Magill, J.: Oh yes.
Callan, B.: Yeah? We okay? We got another?
Magill, J.: What were we saying? I lost my train of thought.
Callan, B.: You were talking about the Manhattan Project.
Magill, J.: Yeah, the Manhattan Project and the --
Callan, B.: And they were just saying that they were just working on the project and I asked you if you got along with -- if everyone kind of got along with these outsiders and you said --
Magill, J.: Yes, they had to rely on the county people quite a bit for food processing and there was -- they would live anywhere they could find. I’ve got a piece of property now, or recently owned a piece of property where was a creek going through there and they had little trailers and boxes they lived in actually there and the creek was their sanitary. But they lived and everybody rented anything that they had like a cold house, a chicken house.
[1:16:52]
One little man was well off, he rented his house to some of the chiefs at Oak Ridge and lived in one of the small apartments. So, they got along.
Callan, B.: How do you think that history will look at the Manhattan Project. How do you think the Manhattan Project affected the world?
Magill, J.: Well, it changed the course of history. You couldn’t build that today. There’s no way you could build anything like that. And the reason is, in Oak Ridge, the senator McKellar was the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and Roosevelt said I got a secret project I need a lot of money and he said, well, where do you want to build it? In Tennessee.
Callan, B.: Senator -- was he a Tennessee senator?
Magill, J.: Yes.
Callan, B.: Senator McKellar.
[1:18:02]
Magill, J.: McKellar.
Callan, B.: Mckellar?
Magill, J.: Yes.
Callan, B.: What do you think is important to be noted about -- what should history know about the folks that lived here before K-25 was built? What should be remembered about you guys?
Magill, J.: Well, I guess it actually motivated us. My dad and mother didn’t have the advantage of having an education and I decided what I was going to do at the age of thirteen and never looked back. I had to work the three eleven shifts and then went to school eight to two in law school to get my degree because that’s the only way that I could go to school.
Callan, B.: If you could relive all those years, would you change anything?
Magill, J.: I don’t think so.
[1:19:24]
Callan, B.: Do you feel that all for all, given the situation, that the government either did a good job or a bad job with constructing K-25 and with considering folks like yourself?
Magill, J.: They done a bad job in some ways. They bought all the property and they’ve done nothing with it. And they could have been more frugal with the property. They could have built forest stations, would have been an ideal thing because they got these river bottoms and they’re growing up with what I call baggers, you know. The sap and things like that would never produce anything. They could have come in and put up poplars and various other trees and would have profited Oak Ridge Department of Energy and the people that live in it.
Callan, B.: Do you think, overall, do you think that they have been responsible in taking care of the environment around here or not?
Magill, J.: I don’t think they’ve been as frugal as they should. They’ve tried in certain cases like donating property to the city of Oak Ridge, which doesn’t really enhance the value of outside Oak Ridge much.
[1:21:27]
Callan, B.: Those really -- let me ask you this one. This is kind of a little twist here. If I wanted, let’s say I’m a writer and I wanted to write a story about the folks that lived here before K-25 and their lives all the way up through the facility being built and then what happened to you guys afterwards, what topics do you think would be important to cover in that book?
Magill, J.: Well, I hadn’t really thought of it in that way. But I think the fact that the individuality of the people who were here and they were self-sufficient. They didn’t rely on anybody, so to speak. They had home remedies and I was a junior in high school where there was a doctor’s office. And that was when I went to Boys State and then I needed to get out of town so I went over to the doctor’s office and he said, how do you feel? And I said, fine. Okay. So that was my examination.
[1:23:16]
Callan, B.: Question about that. Did -- when K-25 was in its operation, was there better health facilities or healthcare provided to you and your community? Maybe subsidized by the government or anything like that?
Magill, J.: Not that I’m aware of.
Callan, B.: And, were the facilities -- did they provide high quality facilities or was it just sort of the same facilities that were there before?
Magill, J.: They provided, you know, fair facilities and Oak Ridge Hospital, of course, had good doctors that came in. Most of them came in with the army and were stationed here during the war so once the war was over they just stayed on. Most of them were very competent.
Callan, B.: Were there other facilities or, you know, perks the municipality got by the virtue of being close to Oak Ridge? Did you have better access to food after they came? Better access to certain supplies than you had before?
Magill, J.: Maybe so, but I’m not aware of it.
[1:24:42]
Callan, B.: Okay. Really, those are all the questions that I have for you. Is there any other comments that you would like to make that you think should be something to be, I guess, recorded and preserved?
Magill, J.: I think that the Department of Energy needs to recycle some of this property they own, which is laying out there dormant and not producing anything. They need to get it back in the tax stream. I’ve offered to buy some tracts back and they’re not interested. But they don’t really are not using it for anything. So, I think they could do a better job in that. I noticed in yesterday’s paper they donated an easement, whatever that means, to Oak Ridge. Of course, that was a hundred acres.
Callan, B.: In later years, has anybody or yourself or anybody in your family, have they asked for or received any additional compensation from the DOE or the government or?
[1:26:10]
Magill, J.: Not that I’m aware of. I would ask for some consideration for like buying the farm back, but they don’t consider that. The only thing they’ve done to the farm down there is, like I say, they improved the road. They built power lines through it, high transmission, and a gas line.
Callan, B.: Have you or your family ever received any sort of, I guess, expression of appreciation?
Magill, J.: No.
Callan, B.: No. Not at all?
Magill, J.: No.
Callan, B.: Okay. That’s really all the questions I can think of. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about?
Magill, J.: I think that probably covers it.
Callan, B.: About good?
Magill, J.: Yeah.
Callan, B.: Thank you so much, Joe. It was -- that was just wonderful.
[End of Interview]

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K-25 Oral History Interview
Date: 4/15/05
Interviewee: Joe Magill
Interviewer: Bart Callan
[1:00:08]
Callan, B.: Let’s start out with some hard hitting questions first. Go ahead and say your name and spell your name out for me so that way we have that on the camera.
Magill, J.: Joe. E. Magill. That’s M-A-G-I-L-L. No capital in the G.
Callan, B.: Okay. And, let’s talk about your background. Where were you born?
Magill, J.: Born in Bear Creek Valley just below where 95 crosses Bear Creek.
Callan, B.: And you grew up down there?
Magill, J.: Yes.
Callan, B.: Okay.
Magill, J.: Until I was 13 years old.
Callan, B.: Okay. And what -- describe the place for me, the way it was back then.
[1:01:48]
Magill, J.: It was rural, very rural. There was no electricity. Out in the rural community there was a wheat area had electrification. And the school -- the school had electrification before we got it from Tennessee Power by a ductal system we had running.
[Crew Talk]
An interesting note is that in high school, which is up at Clinton, we had a boy who the only thing he wanted to do was draw airplanes and fly those airplanes. The teacher saw these going, he’ll never do anything. He designed Gemini Rocket.
Callan, B.: Really?
Magill, J.: -- he is back to the classroom a couple years ago and he said many people didn’t realize that they had -- Neil Armstrong had twelve seconds to get off the moon.
Callan, B.: I’m sorry?
Magill, J.: Had twelve seconds left to get off the moon.
Callan, B.: Really?
[1:04:30]
Magill, J.: Right. If he hadn’t got off in twelve seconds, he’d a missed the ride home. [laughter].
Callan, B.: I want you to talk about that so I’ll ask you about that at the end.
[Crew Talk]
Callan, B.: Tell me just what you had for breakfast today. We’re just doing -- we’re trying to the audio straight so we make sure we get you interview down.
Magill, J.: Okay. I had a bowl of cereal, a banana, and strawberries, a cup of coffee.
[Crew Talk]
Callan, B.: Okay. And again, we’re going to have to back up again and tell me about what this place looked like back when you were growing up.
Magill, J.: It was a -- this farming area, the farms were hill country, most of them. Of course they had some real river bottom farms along the Clinch and it was the area that hunters liked to come in and hunt because we -- they had only a hundred sixteen acres and they released two coveys of quail on the property here and it was completely ruled, I’d say outside of Wheat area, there was no electrification.
[1:07:04]
We had Baker’s Mill was the waterwheel turning the mill. That was at where East Fork empties into Poplar Creek. That was where you got your corn ground, also your wheat ground and flour. They had bran and what they call second and the fine flour. The seconds what they used to make gingerbread and whole wheat actually meal is what it was.
Callan, B.: What did -- who did you live out here with? You lived out here with your parents, I guess? Your folks? Mom and dad?
Magill, J.: I’m sorry?
Callan, B.: You lived out here with your parents?
Magill, J.: Yes.
Callan, B.: Okay. Who all lived out on your property?
[1:07:52]
Magill, J.: It was -- the property was where 95 crosses Bear Creek Valley. South of that.
Callan, B.: Okay. And who lived out there with you?
Magill, J.: Okay. Dad and mother, Charles Robert Magill and Anne Freels Magill and two sisters. Two twin sisters and one sister. In other words, there were five of us all together. Two years difference in all the births, except the twins.
Callan, B.: Okay. And how big was your property.
Magill, J.: A hundred and sixteen acres. It was known as Magill Valley because you had dad’s farm, uncle Ben’s farm, Frank’s farm, and Bill’s farm. All the Magills in a sequence down Bear Creek Valley.
Callan, B.: And, so, was that all part of the same hundred acres or were these --
Magill, J.: No. They were more than a hundred acres.
Callan, B.: All together.
[1:09:13]
Magill, J.: All together there was about 800 acres. Excuse me.
Callan, B.: And, what was your lifestyle like out here? What did your parents do?
Magill, J.: We, we truck patched. In other words, they raised vegetables and we’d take those to market and sell them. We made sorghum molasses, where you grind the cane and that was our main I guess you could call it cash crop. We didn’t grow tobacco. Dad didn’t. We grew two crops in one. The first and last. He said there’s got to be a better way to make a living than to fool with tobacco. We had our own wheat, in other words we were pretty self-sufficient. Of course, we had chickens, eggs, milk. We’d kill hogs, several hogs and we processed the meat and sold it for sausage. We killed nineteen hogs one winter and ground up everything but the hams and the lard, of course. And mother was mixing it and put it in the butter pan mold and it weighed exactly a pound and so that’s the way we made our living. But the only thing we had to buy, of course we had to buy vinegar, salt, soda, kerosene for the oil lamps, and flavor, things like that.
[1:11:32]
Callan, B.: And, where did you go to buy that stuff? Was there a little town?
Magill, J.: We had a little country store close by and we’d go to Harriman or Kingston or Lenoir City. Very seldom ever come to Clinton. Of course, we had to cross the ferry going to Lenoir City or White Wing and then the Gallahar Ferry going to Kingston. We were about sixteen miles from either, sixteen miles either Kingston or Lenoir City. They had also did some logging when he was growing up he -- where Melton Hill Dam is now they would raft logs. They would tie them together and ride them down to Chattanooga when the spring rains came.
Callan, B.: And that was on what river?
Magill, J.: Clinch. Right
[1:12:53]
Callan, B.: The area of the Clinch River, over by the Clinch River where they chose to build the K-25 building, had you been -- had you ever been to that country before or that area?
Magill, J.: Oh yes.
Callan, B.: What was it like before they came in?
Magill, J.: It was a -- they had the routers and the -- they had the tractors and they did quite a bit more farming, raised cattle, and this type of thing than we did because our farm was small and it was hill country.
Callan, B.: Do you know whose farm it was?
Magill, J.: Oh --
Callan, B.: That the building is on. Whose property was that?
Magill, J.: It was dads. My father homesteaded in Montana, cleared up a homestead and he dried out. Had three bumper crops and in the fourth year he didn’t even make the seed back. So he mortgaged the homestead and came back to Tennessee and bought his brother’s and sister’s interest in the home place and was living there. He and mother got married after they got back from out west.
[1:14:21]
Callan, B.: So, the actual place where K-25 was built, that was a part of Magill Valley? Is that it?
Magill, J.: No. You had Magill Valley was east of the bend in the river where the Gallaher’s and Browder’s owned. We’d go there to -- they had a stud horse and we’d take the mare over to breed her and sometimes a bull -- they’d take cows to the bull because everybody didn’t have a bull and --
Callan, B.: So, who was it actually that had that land?
Magill, J.: Ray Gallaher and WT and Ray Brower.
Callan, B.: I’m sorry. What was the last one?
Magill, J.: Ray Brower.
Callan, B.: Can you spell that for me?
Magill, J.: B-R-O-W-E-R.
Callan, B.: Thank you. So, prior to that it was basically like a pasture, I guess.
[1:15:34]
Magill, J.: Well, it was -- they had the -- like I said, they raised cattle, more cattle than we did. We just had our own milk -- had a milk cow. Two milk cows. And they raised cattle to sell and trade. And they, of course, had a big wheat crop and we sold our wheat, that which we didn’t use, to JL and Smith’s in Knoxville.
Callan, B.: And you were pretty young back then, but --
Magill, J.: Right.
Callan, B.: -- can, do you recall what were your first encounters, I guess -- did you remember when you first saw government people and surveyors and people coming out here and one of the first times the government had contact with your folks? What happened?
Magill, J.: On October, 1942, WT Cooper and I were stripping Sorghum cane and they came through the fields and cut a swath through the cane patch and, doing a survey. And we asked them what they were doing it for and they said, I think it was “a dollar and a half an hour. And then from then on -- we didn’t have to move until March the fifteenth, ‘43.
[1:17:16]
Now, most people around where Y-12 and K-25 and X-10, that’s where the work started immediately. They had to move out almost immediately. Uncle Jim Anderson owned a bigger part of X-10 and his notice was filed on November the 20th, ‘42 and the date of taking was December the 12th.
Callan, B.: What are these surveyor guys -- so, basically when you asked them what they were doing it for and there answer was about a dollar ten an hour, jut sort of like a wise remark, I guess.
Magill, J.: Yeah.
Callan, B.: They just weren’t telling you. Did anybody ever give you any sort of idea of that or tell your parents what was going on?
Magill, J.: Nothing.
Callan, B.: What, do you remember the day that they came and said that you had to leave? How much time did they give you?
[1:18:34]
Magill, J.: I don’t recall the exact time because, like I say, we were out in the rural, more rural area. There wasn’t anything going on. Where they cut the swaths through the cane patch, there’s a gas line there now. That’s the only thing they’d done to our farm down there was improve the road and put a high transmission line through, and the gas line. The rest of it’s like it was -- well, they’ve planted pines and the beetles eat the pines, but --
Callan, B.: What about -- what about the people in this community. What were they talking about when this was going on? What did you guys think of these outsiders?
Magill, J.: Well, they didn’t think much of them. They -- a lot of conversation going on and, of course, they’d always get back to, well, this is for the war effort. Everybody had a loved one in the army and some of the boys in the community had lost their lives and --
Callan, B.: I’m taking notes here for --
Magill, J.: Yeah.
[1:20:06]
Callan, B.: What was I going to ask you? What did these guys look like?
Magill, J.: They looked just ordinary like you and I. The, of course, they had a little surveyor stake and I found out those surveyor stakes made real good kindling. [laughter]
Callan, B.: Oh wow. This is the kind of stuff I want to hear. So, tell me about the move when you guys had to pack up and go.
Magill, J.: Well --
Callan, B.: What was it like?
Magill, J.: Well, you take 56,000 acres out of the tax stream, what does that do to the property outside of the main area taken? The measure of damage is, of course, is the time of taking. Well, the time of taking, there wasn’t much comparison. There hadn’t been much free wheeling, in other words, a willing buyer and a willing seller of how the market process is established. There hadn’t been much of that because we were still in the depths of the depression and so what happened -- here you take 56,000 acres out of the tax stream, it triples, more than triples the property outside that. So, we had 116 acres, a six room house, hardwood floors, and oak floors down the stairs, maple upstairs, and it had a large barn, all the out buildings and they paid us 3,200 dollars for it; which was not enough to replace it. So, we had to share crop. We shared cropped until I got through college.
[1:22:26]
Callan, B.: After, so, let me make sure that I understand. And I think that I do. You’re saying that when this acreage was bought and displaced all these people, the land that was available surrounding this acreage, of course, the sort of basic law of supply and demand, the property values just shot through the roof because this happened. So, I mean, by comparison, if you or your folks went to purchase an equivalent farm, what would it cost you? You were given 3,200 dollars. What would it have cost you to get the equivalent piece?
Magill, J.: Probably twelve to fifteen thousand at that time.
[1:23:13]
Callan, B.: So, property values really went up about five fold? Five times?
Magill, J.: Right. I offered to buy the farm that dad owned back from the Department of Energy and I offered them what they paid for it based upon the present rate of forty-two dollars and it came to around 39,000, but they weren’t interested.
Callan, B.: So, how did your family feel when they were, you know, when they had to start doing sharecropping? How did your life change as a result of this? Your lifestyle?
Magill, J.: Well, it also changed the time that we had much larger farm to take care of. Kenneth, my brother, four years older than I was, had to go to the service so that left my dad and I and we had to -- we planted five hundred pound seed potatoes every spring. We planted probably an acre of watermelons and tomatoes and sweet potatoes and that -- we got fifty percent of the, of the truck patches and then the large crops, like corn and wheat and oats, we got two fifths.
Callan, B.: Pretty much everyone in the community more or less, would you say they kind of went through the exact same story that --
[1:25:15]
Magill, J.: Yes.
Callan, B.: -- that happened to you?
Magill, J.: Right. Of course, they were going by the rules of law and what they should have taken this as a unique situation, not just the average, willing buyer, willing seller. They should have taken the fact that this much came out of the tax stream and it caused the other property to be or exceed the value that would have been if there hadn’t been anything taken.
Callan, B.: Tell me about, and you mentioned this before the interview, but tell me about the school.
Magill, J.: We had a one through twelve Wheat High, Wheat Consolidated High School, one through twelve. And we had very good teachers. One teacher per room, each grade had one teacher. And, they motivated us. We found out it was a lot easier to go to school than it was to stay at home and work for our parents. There was about twenty something in my class and we had a girl who went on and got a doctorate in English. I think there’s about five got their master’s in education plus twenty five -- forty five, and two attorneys.
[1:27:11]
Callan, B.: And you’re one of them. Right?
Magill, J.: Yeah.
Callan, B.: Okay. The Wheat School, let’s go ahead and just change tapes real quick. We’re going to -- the tapes only run 30 minutes, so we got to flip tapes every --
[End Of Tape 1 - Begin Tape 2]
[2:00:07]
Callan, B.: Okay. We are back on. So, we were talking about the Wheat School. After all these folks from all these other places they came from came to do the work at the K-25, were you going to the same school that their kids were going to? Did you have --
Magill, J.: No, I -- the Wheat School closed on December the 20th, ‘42 and then some of the students were already moved out. Some of them went to Dyllis some went to in Oliver Springs to finish out that year. My sisters had -- they went to Oliver Springs and graduated in June.
[1:01:38]
Callan, B.: Okay. And, gosh we were talking about what happened when they closed down the Wheat School and some people went to -- some went to Oliver Springs and to, was it Dyllis?
Magill, J.: Yes. I went to Dyllis until March of that year and I finished the seventh grade at the Sulfur Spring, that’s out in Clinton and Dutch Valley. You had to understand, we left a school that had running water, electricity, a big cafeteria, and -- see, Wheat owned one hundred fifty acres of farm and the farm boys planted the crops, the cafeteria workers harvested them, canned them to be used in the cafeteria and moved out of Anderson County, had to go to a three-room school, no electricity and no indoor plumbing, no cafeteria and no gymnasium to play ball. It’s quite a come down.
Callan, B.: So, after you finished out the one year, then was there another schoolhouse built or --
[1:03:18]
Magill, J.: No. Wheat School was used for a short while for office at K-25. Then they tore down the school for some reason. I don’t know why because it was a great building, very good brick.
Callan, B.: What’s there now?
Magill, J.: Nothing.
Callan, B.: Okay. And, so after you finished out the one year of school, then where did everybody go to school. You know, if you were like in third grade, where did you go to finish your schooling?
Magill, J.: Well, like I say, I finished the seventh grade and then we moved, the whole family moved so that meant we could go to the school in Anderson County where we lived and so I went to school there, Clinton -- to eighth grade at Dutch Valley and Clinton through the rest of the high school. Five years, never missed a day.
[1:04:33]
Callan, B.: Did the children living, the implants, the children of the implants that were living in Oak Ridge, did they go to the same schools or did they have separate schools?
Magill, J.: No, they had separate schools. They had the Oak Ridge School. We very seldom would associate with them other than for a football game or basketball game.
Callan, B.: Was there a lot of rivalry and resentment at the football games?
Magill, J.: Oh yes.
Callan, B.: Tell me about that.
Magill, J.: There was, well, you know, now Oak Ridge wins most of the games, they have a better crowd to draw from than we did. But, when I was in high school they never beat us. Of course, I didn’t get to play sports because I had fifty head of cattle to feed and three hundred laying hens to feed and gather the eggs and so I was pretty busy.
[1:05:52]
Callan, B.: Did the, I guess the value of the stuff you farmed, was any of the stuff that was being farmed, was it being sold to Oak Ridge?
Magill, J.: Through the restaurants. Mr. Hopkins owned a restaurant down here and we supplied much of the potatoes, corn, beans to those restaurants. And you could sell anything with a meat to it and one of my projects in the future farmers was raising chickens and I could raise a chicken in six weeks and it would weigh a pound and a half. And I sold those a dollar apiece on foot. And people would take them, dress them themselves. We didn’t dress any chickens.
Callan, B.: A dollar apiece at the time, was that a pretty good price for a chicken?
Magill, J.: Yes. Uh-huh.
Callan, B.: Were there other ways that, I guess, that K-25 and Oak Ridge came to be that you would say either yourself or people that you knew benefited or -- were positive things happening to this community and positive things happening --
[1:07:29]
Magill, J.: Well, it benefited the whole community, as such, because before this you had -- the industry was coal mining and Magnet Mill and that was it. Then, so, Oak Ridge is built on -- or Anderson County is built on energy. First you had lumber business; second, the coal; third, water from Norris Dam and then nuclear energy. So, its base is energy.
Callan, B.: Did a lot of people that were in this community -- did they end up getting jobs, any of them?
Magill, J.: Oh yes. Several of them, yes. My theory was why there were three large tracts of land to build these three separate plants on, you separated -- there is separation, (Indiscernible) Chestnut Ridge and then Black Oak Ridge. They didn’t know what they were doing, so they just waited for one plant to blow up and this would fix it, what they had invested in the other one. That’s my theory.
Callan, B.: They -- what they -- boy, I could tell you I know from the interviews and basically there was three different processes and they weren’t sure which process was going to work and since they had to get this accomplished in such a short period of time to make this material, they built factories or plants to try out or to see basically -- went full scale production to see if they could make one of the three processes and what process would work best. But that’s why they have the three different buildings. One process was a thermal process. There was another one that was based on gaseous diffusion and one that was based on magnetism. And the one that they ended up going with was the one that was based on gaseous diffusion that they found most agreeable. But, yeah, they were trying to see which one was actually going to work properly and that’s what I’ve been able to discern from the previous interviews I’m doing. I just wanted to see if maybe you were interested.
[1:10:07]
Magill, J.: To answer your question there, did the area benefit. Yes the area benefited from -- so few; many of the people had to take the rough end of the stick, so to speak. They shared un-proportionate share of their life.
Callan, B.: What was the next question I was going to ask. I had a good one. In reflection now, how do you feel about what happened? How do you feel about K-25 being built here?
Magill, J.: I think I’d say it benefited the whole area. There was people like my father and mother -- my mother never really got over the move. But they had -- he really bounced like a rubber ball. It didn’t’ matter. He can adjust anywhere. He could adjust to all sort of degree, winter in Montana, you can -- so, I don’t know. It profited the community, as such.
Callan, B.: When they were -- and I’m sure there was a lot of buzz around the community about, you know, all this activity going on over here and I’m sure that you had contact, you know, ran into these people from time to time. When -- do you have any funny or interesting stories about when, you know, you asked these people what it was they were doing out there? What did they tell you?
Magill, J.: Well, they didn’t tell us anything about what they were doing. I worked out there a little while for engineering in payroll, just for a few months and they told me when I went in, they says, you don’t know how many people are working here. You don’t know when the trucks come in or go out. You don’t know what they’re hauling. You just don’t know. So, I think -- most people treated it that way.
[1:12:48]
Callan, B.: At the time, did you have any theories or did your family have any theories about what it was they were doing out here?
Magill, J.: No. They thought it was a factory for explosives. That’s all that -- they had no idea of the atomic bomb. It wasn’t mentioned until after the bomb was dropped. No one outside the Oak Ridge knew of Oak Ridge. It was the Manhattan Project or the (indiscernible).
Callan, B.: When -- do you remember that particular day? It was August 6, 1945, I believe, was the day the atomic bomb was dropped. Do you remember what you were doing on that day?
Magill, J.: No, I don’t.
Callan, B.: When you found out, I guess it was probably shortly thereafter, it probably came out in the newspapers --
[1:13:53]
Magill, J.: Yes.
Callan, B.: -- that Oak Ridge was related to all this. How did you and other people in the community react to that? What did you think about that?
Magill, J.: Well, they took great pride in the fact that they had a part in it. I told you at the beginning here, my brother was in Patton’s third army and he was the first group that came back from over in Europe to train to invade the mainland. He was in training at Fort Campbell Kentucky at the time that the bomb was dropped and, of course, everybody there went wild and they said, Mack, where’s Oak Ridge? And he said, I never heard of it. We’d never heard of it referred to as Oak Ridge; just the Manhattan Project or the Project, really; just the Project. Where do you work? At the Project and they wouldn’t tell you.
[1:15:16]
Callan, B.: Did you guys get along pretty good with these folks?
Magill, J.: Oh yes.
Callan, B.: Yeah? We okay? We got another?
Magill, J.: What were we saying? I lost my train of thought.
Callan, B.: You were talking about the Manhattan Project.
Magill, J.: Yeah, the Manhattan Project and the --
Callan, B.: And they were just saying that they were just working on the project and I asked you if you got along with -- if everyone kind of got along with these outsiders and you said --
Magill, J.: Yes, they had to rely on the county people quite a bit for food processing and there was -- they would live anywhere they could find. I’ve got a piece of property now, or recently owned a piece of property where was a creek going through there and they had little trailers and boxes they lived in actually there and the creek was their sanitary. But they lived and everybody rented anything that they had like a cold house, a chicken house.
[1:16:52]
One little man was well off, he rented his house to some of the chiefs at Oak Ridge and lived in one of the small apartments. So, they got along.
Callan, B.: How do you think that history will look at the Manhattan Project. How do you think the Manhattan Project affected the world?
Magill, J.: Well, it changed the course of history. You couldn’t build that today. There’s no way you could build anything like that. And the reason is, in Oak Ridge, the senator McKellar was the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and Roosevelt said I got a secret project I need a lot of money and he said, well, where do you want to build it? In Tennessee.
Callan, B.: Senator -- was he a Tennessee senator?
Magill, J.: Yes.
Callan, B.: Senator McKellar.
[1:18:02]
Magill, J.: McKellar.
Callan, B.: Mckellar?
Magill, J.: Yes.
Callan, B.: What do you think is important to be noted about -- what should history know about the folks that lived here before K-25 was built? What should be remembered about you guys?
Magill, J.: Well, I guess it actually motivated us. My dad and mother didn’t have the advantage of having an education and I decided what I was going to do at the age of thirteen and never looked back. I had to work the three eleven shifts and then went to school eight to two in law school to get my degree because that’s the only way that I could go to school.
Callan, B.: If you could relive all those years, would you change anything?
Magill, J.: I don’t think so.
[1:19:24]
Callan, B.: Do you feel that all for all, given the situation, that the government either did a good job or a bad job with constructing K-25 and with considering folks like yourself?
Magill, J.: They done a bad job in some ways. They bought all the property and they’ve done nothing with it. And they could have been more frugal with the property. They could have built forest stations, would have been an ideal thing because they got these river bottoms and they’re growing up with what I call baggers, you know. The sap and things like that would never produce anything. They could have come in and put up poplars and various other trees and would have profited Oak Ridge Department of Energy and the people that live in it.
Callan, B.: Do you think, overall, do you think that they have been responsible in taking care of the environment around here or not?
Magill, J.: I don’t think they’ve been as frugal as they should. They’ve tried in certain cases like donating property to the city of Oak Ridge, which doesn’t really enhance the value of outside Oak Ridge much.
[1:21:27]
Callan, B.: Those really -- let me ask you this one. This is kind of a little twist here. If I wanted, let’s say I’m a writer and I wanted to write a story about the folks that lived here before K-25 and their lives all the way up through the facility being built and then what happened to you guys afterwards, what topics do you think would be important to cover in that book?
Magill, J.: Well, I hadn’t really thought of it in that way. But I think the fact that the individuality of the people who were here and they were self-sufficient. They didn’t rely on anybody, so to speak. They had home remedies and I was a junior in high school where there was a doctor’s office. And that was when I went to Boys State and then I needed to get out of town so I went over to the doctor’s office and he said, how do you feel? And I said, fine. Okay. So that was my examination.
[1:23:16]
Callan, B.: Question about that. Did -- when K-25 was in its operation, was there better health facilities or healthcare provided to you and your community? Maybe subsidized by the government or anything like that?
Magill, J.: Not that I’m aware of.
Callan, B.: And, were the facilities -- did they provide high quality facilities or was it just sort of the same facilities that were there before?
Magill, J.: They provided, you know, fair facilities and Oak Ridge Hospital, of course, had good doctors that came in. Most of them came in with the army and were stationed here during the war so once the war was over they just stayed on. Most of them were very competent.
Callan, B.: Were there other facilities or, you know, perks the municipality got by the virtue of being close to Oak Ridge? Did you have better access to food after they came? Better access to certain supplies than you had before?
Magill, J.: Maybe so, but I’m not aware of it.
[1:24:42]
Callan, B.: Okay. Really, those are all the questions that I have for you. Is there any other comments that you would like to make that you think should be something to be, I guess, recorded and preserved?
Magill, J.: I think that the Department of Energy needs to recycle some of this property they own, which is laying out there dormant and not producing anything. They need to get it back in the tax stream. I’ve offered to buy some tracts back and they’re not interested. But they don’t really are not using it for anything. So, I think they could do a better job in that. I noticed in yesterday’s paper they donated an easement, whatever that means, to Oak Ridge. Of course, that was a hundred acres.
Callan, B.: In later years, has anybody or yourself or anybody in your family, have they asked for or received any additional compensation from the DOE or the government or?
[1:26:10]
Magill, J.: Not that I’m aware of. I would ask for some consideration for like buying the farm back, but they don’t consider that. The only thing they’ve done to the farm down there is, like I say, they improved the road. They built power lines through it, high transmission, and a gas line.
Callan, B.: Have you or your family ever received any sort of, I guess, expression of appreciation?
Magill, J.: No.
Callan, B.: No. Not at all?
Magill, J.: No.
Callan, B.: Okay. That’s really all the questions I can think of. Is there anything else that you would like to talk about?
Magill, J.: I think that probably covers it.
Callan, B.: About good?
Magill, J.: Yeah.
Callan, B.: Thank you so much, Joe. It was -- that was just wonderful.
[End of Interview]